The company said the new products were designed to help both big and small organizations "enhance their internal collaboration potential, solve security and password problems, and build their sales leads".

Zoho Pulse works like a social networking tool, similar to Yammer, and is designed to enhance business collaboration within organizations. With this tool, a company can establish its own private, social network to encourage communication and collaboration across the organization as well as select departments and users.

It is available in the Professional Edition for US$2 per user per month, while the Enterprise Edition is priced at US$5 per user per month. Zoho also offers a free version for unlimited users but only for public groups, not private ones. All three editions are available on iPhone and Android.

Zoho Vault is touted as a secure, easy-to-use online password manager. It creates a central repository that enables data privacy for companies looking to store, organize, manage, and safely share their passwords, online credentials, financial records, and other sensitive data. It allows businesses to assign different access privileges according to different user profiles.

Passwords are encrypted with the latest encryption standard, AES-256. The passphrase, which the user enters to access the software and that's used as an encryption key, is not stored on the Zoho Vault server or on the user's computer or phone.

The Personal Edition of the software is free and supports one user, while the Enterprise Edition is US$1 per user per month and supports an unlimited number of users. The app is available for iPhones.

Zoho Leads only supports iPhones.

Zoho Leads is another iOS app which can scan attendee badges at events and connect directly to the host's CRM system. This allows companies to more easily assign lead owners, take notes, and add tasks instantly.

As events increasingly use QR codes to encapsulate attendee information, the vendor said the Leads app can help capture important visitor information. In cases where the QR scanning fails, the app uses OCR. It can also be used as a business card scanning app.

I think Zoho Leads sounds very interesting and useful. It hurts, though, that the app works only on the iPhone. As a Windows Phone user, I'm usually disappointed with Zoho over its lack of support for the Microsoft platform, and with the Vault and Leads offerings, the vendo has also alienated Android users.

Disclosure

Abhishek Baxi doesn't hold shares or investments in the organizations he covers. When he blogs about companies he previously associated with through his work as an independent consultant, he discloses that in each blog entry.